In his recent column Justin Foxton problematized the debate about whiteness and privileges that go with it. Foxton wrote thus: “….thinking about my own identity and caused me to reflect on the fact that whilst I am a white South African, I would currently rather not be.”
Foxton clearly doesn’t get it; whilst I am black South African, I would rather not be. I have always found my blackness disabling. The burden of black bodies is too much to bear. Today, I confess to being one of those who have had an ambivalent attitude to race, and racial identity. Yes, I am black. I look and speak like them, but I don’t have black feelings anymore. I am in a perpetual nostalgic mode akin to the 1994 rainbowism. Interestingly, my ambivalence about my blackness dates back to the early 80s.
I look at the world through the prism of natives and whites living side by side in a state of nirvana, except that I am no longer a native. I refuse to let go of this dream. I do not feel the black pain like that Stellenbosch student protester who yelled at the Western Cape Premier Helen Zille saying, "I've worked to get here, it is not a privilege to be here'. She added that her mother who has worked as a domestic worker for the past 15 years makes R2 400, "where are the labour laws in this land?" she asked Zille.
I can’t comprehend her pain as my mother was never a domestic worker neither my father ever worked as a gardener for a white family. I also have never worked in the white suburbia doing gardening jobs like some black boys did in my neighbourhood.
Instead, my parents grew up on the white farms as labour tenants. Interestingly, they have fond memories of serving Afrikaner farmers during their labour tenancy in Vryheid. The only regret that they still have is the manner in which they were expelled, allegedly for defiance. After the scuffle with the farmer, they were exiled to the northern part of the erstwhile KwaZulu homeland and settled at Eshowe. To this day they still hanker for the good old days at the farms where apparently food was in abundance. Strange fellows, you may think.
As the adage goes, an apple never falls far from a tree; I have my own “native nostalgia”. It began in the early 80s long before Nelson Mandela told us to “throw your pangas into the sea.” I have vivid memories of my father breaking bread with a white man in our humble homestead in the rolling hills and valleys of Eshowe. Whilst my father and his white farmer friend were busy sipping tea, the country was in flames due to popular resistance and violent township protests which led to the then apartheid Prime Minister P.W. Botha declaring the State of Emergency. Throughout the popular uprising against apartheid, my father maintained cordial relations with many white males. In fact, when the word was on the streets that the KwaZulu Homeland Government was looking for someone with the rare skills of building the traditional Zulu Huts and deep knowledge of Zulu history, my father was a sole contender. He was recommended for the job by his farmer white friend. That’s how it came to pass that my father became the Chief Induna during the restoration of King Cetshwayo kaMpande’s Ondini homestead.
The sight of my father sipping tea with a white farmer convinced me that whiteness was the way to go. I said to myself, when I grow up, I want to be like a white man. He drove a Land Rover. He had proper clothes. He had a farm. Most importantly, he had people working for him. My fantasy to be like a white man was temporarily shelved when I became aware of the word apartheid. I became extremely angry at the white men in general, but remained indifferent to my white father’s friend. My anger didn’t last long. By 1986, I reached full political consciousness and picked a corner – that of the anti-apartheid forces led by the ANC. The Comrades in the Underground explained to me that it was not about the white men but the System of Apartheid. That was my saving grace. My dream of being white was sustained.
It is no surprise then that the book Cry the Beloved Country penned by Alan Paton, a white liberal - more than any other book or political education classes set the tone for my political activism.
Fast forward, to my arrival, in 1993, as a greenhorn, in the city of Durban to undertake tertiary education - this was a game-changer. I became immersed in the ANC politics dominated by them – white people. We had an overwhelming number of white girls and a mixture of white male war resisters, underground activists and academics. At first sight, I fell in love with white girls. I began to have fantasies of having a white girlfriend. There was chemistry between me and white girls that I had never experienced with black girls. This insatiable desire for white girls had had a happy ending – as I am married to one of them – a one-time ANC activist.
In reality, I have always struggled to come to terms with my blackness. I find it heavy. But, the straw that broke the camel's back was that on three occasions, totalling four years, I stayed in black townships around Durban. Never before, have I ever felt such alienation in my entire life. I must admit I’ve always found comfort in the white suburbia and I think my whiteness is now complete. On the 27th of September this year - something of an epic proportion happened, I knew it was coming. It started slowly. I guess I had to be eased into it. Finally, I dreamt in English. As they say, if you can swear in it and dream in it, well it's your mother tongue. So folks finally I am u-Ngamla equivalent of a white man.
In conclusion, as Njabulo Ndebele once said, I am bothered by the phenomenon of a black majority in power seeming to reduce itself to the status of complainants, as if they had a limited capacity to do anything more significant about the situation at hand than drawing attention to it. The recent spectacle of the #FeesMustFall movement brought to bear the burden of black bodies in our society. How does one explain that black students clad in the ANC regalia stormed Luthuli House and Union Buildings? My greatest challenge is to explain to my daughter what is Coloured than be bothered with the burden of blackness.
Bhekisisa Mncube is the Director of Writing Services at the Ministry of Basic Education, and he writes in his personal capacity.
